India has strong institutional mechanism to prevent dumping of goods from China

Escalation of trade war between US and China may push Beijing to dump goods in Indian markets

New Delhi: India has a strong institutional mechanism to prevent dumping of goods from China, which may resort to this practice following the US proposal to hike duties on certain Chinese goods like electric vehicles, an official said on Wednesday.

According to a report of think tank GTRI, the escalation of the trade war between the US and China may push Beijing to dump goods in the Indian markets.

The US on Tuesday announced plans to slap new tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, advanced batteries, solar cells, steel, aluminum and medical equipment — an election year move that is likely to increase friction between the world’s two largest economies.

“We have our DGTR system, we have our effective anti-dumping system. So, in case somebody wants to dump it, we have all the institutional mechanism to look at it. We will do that accordingly,” the government official said.

The DGTR (Directorate General of Trade Remedies) is an investigation arm of the commerce ministry that deals with anti-dumping duty, safeguard duty, and countervailing duty. These duties are trade remedy measures, provided under an agreement of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to its member countries.

The official said countries want to cut down their dependency on China, particularly for important sectors like mobility by enhancing their capacities and the same policy is being followed by India.

“We are also building up our capacities. We are also taking various measures so that India should not have to depend on one country source for important sectors like vehicles,” the official added.